Want to import some shapes from an ODG doc

[arghvark]

I'm new to OfficeDraw, and in fact to OpenOffice.

I want to draw a particular type of diagram, and found some shapes specific to this diagram type. It comes as a file with the extension "odg", and if I install OpenOffice Draw and double-click on the file, I get over 50 shapes.

I want to use these in many diagrams, so I want them in the Gallery (or something like it) where I can drag the shape I want onto the drawing without losing the shape from where it was. I consider having to copy and paste it from another part of the document to be way too clumsy for the number of diagrams I expect to create over time.

So I guess my problem is getting all these shapes from what is (evidently) a document into the gallery (unless there's a different place to put them for this purpose).

I have found that I can click and hold on one, then drag it to the Gallery, and then right-click it to set its name (the name from the document doesn't come over this way, perhaps that's just another graphic). This is going to be quite tedious for 50 icons, but it can be done.

But does someone else have a better way to do this?

It seems like there ought to be. (I did try exporting the individual graphics so I could import them into the Gallery, but couldn't find a way to do that -- I can export the whole document as a graphic, but I didn't find a way to do it for one shape.)

Once I do that, is there a way to save it as a Gallery Theme so that I can pass it to team members without them having to do the same thing?

[RoryOF]

This thread may help
How to add new shapes to OOo Draw?
and this note
Custom shapes

[arghvark]

I'm afraid neither of those posts help.

The first post just tells what I already said, which is that I can do a "special drag" of a shape to the gallery (in fact, I got that info from that post).

The second post is a little hard to understand; it says "by putting shapes into the gallery you are creating/modifying a gallery theme which can be found in your installed office in basis/share/gallery/" and "Such modified gallery theme can be used for your office source in extras/source/gallery/gallery_system which will then be part of the installation set. The following three files are containing some basic Custom Shapes such as pie, octagon... So if you are modifying a shape of this category or are adding a new one, you have update following files." On windows, it appears the files created are in AppData/Roaming/OpenOffice/4/user/gallery, since I have some files there created at the time I was experimenting with drag-and-drop. There's one named 'sdddndx1', and others with types of sdv, thm, and sdg. All of them are binary; I have no way to create these files, that I know of, except the drag-and-drop that I was trying to avoid for my 50 files, and no known way to transfer what I've done to another installation.

Is there any other help to be had on this?

[acknak]

I don't know any trick to move a whole group of shapes into the Gallery.

Frankly, I'm not a fan of the Gallery: it could be quite handy, but it has some limitations that make it more trouble than it's worth (for me, at least).

Instead, I use the shapes from a separate OO Draw document. You can copy/paste into the working drawing. If you prefer, you can drag/drop (hold Ctrl to copy & leave the original).

[keme]

I don't know any trick to move a whole group of shapes into the Gallery.

Frankly, I'm not a fan of the Gallery: it could be quite handy, but it has some limitations that make it more trouble than it's worth (for me, at least).

Instead, I use the shapes from a separate OO Draw document. You can copy/paste into the working drawing. If you prefer, you can drag/drop (hold Ctrl to copy & leave the original).

You can also keep it as a separate sheet (or "slide") in your file. This reduces the number of open windows, which works better for me. With separate windows as acknak suggests, you may have better control of immediate placement. See what works best for you and your team.

You could make a template file with perhaps several slides acting as "gallery themes". For each new drawing you base on that template, just delete those slides when they are not needed any more. To share with your team, make that template a shared file on your network. (It is possible to have a shared gallery theme by adding a gallery path pointing to shared network storage, but that is a bit fiddly, and I am not sure how well it works when you add objects to that theme. You may need to have the gallery folder writable for one user only to avoid conflicts with concurrent access.)

Replacing the gallery with a "gallery slide" or two makes it easier to copy an entire object set in one go, like you requested. Also, when you have group objects consisting of parts from different layers, the group object is "flattened" to one single layer when you use the gallery. This is an important reason I have mostly quit using the gallery.